


Visions Are Seldom All They Seem

by RedBlazer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, Limbo, M/M, Marvel Norse Lore, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sick Steve Rogers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBlazer/pseuds/RedBlazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve furrows his eyebrows at the man. As confused as he is, he’s growing tired of getting nothing but vague answers.</p><p>“Then I’d like to go back home.” Steve answers, crossing his arms over his chest.</p><p>The man chuckles, one of his hands goes to his hip casually. “I didn’t say where you wanted to go. I said where you’re meant to go.”</p><p>The biting edge of the coin in his palm eggs Steve on. “Well, then I just won’t get on the boat. Not if I don’t know where I’m going.”</p><p>And now the man is thoroughly amused. His smile draws up to one side. “You’ll wander.” Steve shakes his head in response. “You will. You’ll wander until the ship comes back and you’ll get on eventually. Everyone does.”</p><p>“I don’t think so, pal.” Steve says, drawing away from the man and turning towards the forest. And while its darkness scares him, he knows better than to get into strange boats with strange men. He’s from Brooklyn. "You're not on the ship."</p><p>"Kid," The stranger says, "I'm different."</p><p>--------</p><p>A Marvel twist on the Persephone and Hades Myth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions Are Seldom All They Seem

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is very loosely based on a scene from Meg Cabot's "Abandon", which is a lovely series and you should all read it. I'm mostly using her construct for what takes place in the afterlife as a basis for this fic. I feel like this fic is a Persephone/Hades AU, with some Beauty and the Beast and a good amount of Avengers mixed in.
> 
> Also, I'm tagging for major character death mostly because of the first chapter. I fully intend for this fic to have a happy ending after all the angst.
> 
> Title is taken from Sleeping Beauty's "Once Upon a Dream". These characters aren't mine.

Life may not have been outstanding. What with being poor, losing his parents before he was out of school, and having a body that was always more sick than okay.

But at least it was life.

And for Steve Rogers, life is ending on an ordinary afternoon in September, 1938.

He’s 20 years old and staring up at the plaster ceiling of the hospital ward. Inside his chest, his lungs have filled up with so much fluid that he’s drowning above sea level. Pneumonia. And his small body can no longer continue on this course. It’s the slow and somehow still sudden thing that is dying.

On an ordinary afternoon in September, 1938 Steve Rogers loses consciousness and the nurse on the ward calls for the priest to give the man (still very much a boy) his last rites.

Later one nurse will recall to another how Steve’s skin had been the same color as the white sheets he was under, apart from the bluish tint of his lips from lack of oxygen. They draw curtains around his cot to give him privacy, though they do nothing from stopping the watery rattle that his lungs produce over and over again until they’re not. A nurse asks another if they should contact anyone. If the boy has any family, they should be on the ward to ease his passing. The other nurse shakes her head softly. There’s no one.

And then he stops being Steve and becomes Steve’s Body.

A doctor comes and presses a stethoscope to Steve’s chest, though it’s apparent to everyone present (including the priest) that the young man is dead.

His time of death is pronounced 4:36 P.M. They draw a sheet over his head. And it’s a force of habit, but the doctor does a sign of the cross. The nurses follow suit.

They exit the curtained off area to go back to their work. Patients to see in the case of the nurses and the doctor, last rites to give in the case of the priest.

All falls quiet on the ward.

At 5:36, a sound draws the attention of the man in the cot next to Steve’s. He shouts for the doctor. He swears the noise came from behind the curtain.

The doctor tells the man that he didn’t hear anything apart from the pipes in the walls and the hissing of the radiator. He tells the man that Steve died and while it’s not the greatest situation, they’ll be around to collect the body in just under an hour.

He pulls back the curtain to retrieve the chart he left at the man’s bedside.

Only, the sheet pressing against Steve’s lips is moving in the constant, gentle in and out of his breathing. Pulled inwards and blown out again every few seconds.

The man in the bed next to Steve’s calls for a nurse when the doctor faints, falling to the ground.

\----------

_Steve knows that it’s not real because he’s standing outside on a hot summer day, pollen blowing through the air and pulling at his clothes. And he feels fine. Not wheezing and coughing from his allergies. Not struggling to draw breath from the asthma._

_He’s fine._

_He’s 20 years old and standing on the shore of a lake so large that he cannot see the other side for a curtain of fog obscures it._

_Steve’s barefoot and his toes are sinking in the mixture of rocks and mud. He thinks that he’s never really done this. Stood outside and hadn’t been afraid that his throat would close up on itself and that the heat would leave him listless and panting. The pale skin of his feet is a stark contras to the brown mud. All of him is untouched by sun and summer. Even with his mother’s blonde hair he is out of place in summer._

_Yet, here he is. Barefoot in summer and looking around at the other people on the shore. They’re all by themselves. Spaced out enough that Steve cannot make out their faces. But there are more than ten on each side of him._

_And how is it that Steve went from a white room and starched sheets, the sound of his wheezing breath the only sound he could here to this place where the gentle lapping of water on the rocky beach is a constant? He doesn’t remember. But something twists in his gut, telling him that this is wrong._

_Behind him, Steve sees a large forest so dense that beyond a few feet in, he cannot make out anything but darkness. The trees stretching as high into the sky is the massive buildings of Manhattan that Steve likes to sketch from the window of his apartment across the river._

_He thinks absently that he doesn’t want to venture into that forest for fear of what lies in the darkness. He’s never been out of the city apart from a trip upstate with his ma to bury his dad at the family plot._

_And even then, he’d been too young to really take in the countryside from the window of the bus they took out of Brooklyn. When Steve tries to put a finger on that memory, it wiggles away, unwilling to be pinned down and examined. He’s left with a blur of green and the smell of static in the air from an oncoming rainstorm that hit during the funeral._

_A constant, gentle splashing sounds in the distance and Steve squints against the sunlight to observe a small dark shape moving through the water. Getting larger and larger as it moves away from the horizon and towards the shore._

_It’s a ship, a huge ship where three figures stand in silhouette against the sun. And though it has no sails or ores, it moves at a constant pace, unstopping. Finally it gets close enough for Steve to make out that the boat is incredibly old, made from massive beams of wood, curved to the perfect shape. The beams are scared from more storms than Steve will ever know. Lichen and snails cling to the hull as it kisses the shoreline, bottoming out against the rocks the only way to stop it._

_Two men disembark the ship with practiced ease, leaping over the prow and landing in the shallows, barefoot just like Steve. They part in practiced ease, one heading left and the other right. Steve being right before the ship is greeted by a man whose face is so plain that he forgets it upon seeing it. The man holds out a hand to Steve wordlessly, and Steve does the same, accepting the bronze coin that’s dropped into his palm wordlessly._

_The man moves on, giving a coin to each of the people on the shore. All of them seem to know what to do, walking towards the boat where the man who is left aboard extends them an arm, pulling them into the ship as easily as children._

_And there is a child, clutching a doll in her hands. But for the most part, the people who make their way to the boat are older than Steve. Some hunched from old age and grateful for the hand into the boat, some simply confused and going along with what everyone else does. Over and over people get into the boat until Steve is the only one standing on the shore, staring down at the coin in his hands._

_It’s a worn thing, soft around the edges in a way that pennies never get the chance to be. Oxidation has turned it green around the edges. There’s a mark upon its surface that Steve can’t make out even when he holds it close to his face._

_“You need that to get to where you need to go.” A voice sounds, much closer than Steve expects._

_Steve holds the coin in his hands, clenching it into a fist. So that the edge of it bites against his palm. And that’s a sensation that he remembers. Pain._

_It brings memories to the surface of collapsing on the dusty stairs of the tenement. A neighbor’s concerned yelling. Strong hands that dropped him onto a gurney. The hospital ward and worrying how he would pay his medical bills. Two weeks of falling in and out of consciousness. And then the realization that he won’t need to pay the bills after all. Two nurses standing at the end of the hall rushing over, calling for a priest._

_Steve looks up. The man before him is dressed in a sharp suit of charcoal gray, complete with a vest, pocket watch, and a burgundy tie that’s been knotted so perfectly that Steve could measure the angles of it with a protractor. He’s the closest thing to a movie star that Steve’s ever seen before this close up. Sleepy gray eyes over chiseled cheekbones, a full mouth, and a strong cleft chin._

_He belongs in black and white three stories up on the silver screen. Yet he stands before Steve as flesh and bone._

_Flesh and bone, smirking down at Steve like he knows everything Steve just thought. Like he just knows Steve outright._

_“Where’s that?” Steve asks, his voice coming out more weakly than he would like. But standing across from the other man, Steve feels every single place on his clothes have been mended, every button just off center from his own repairs, the looseness of his shirt, and the cinched in belt that keeps his pants from falling down._

_The man raises an eyebrow. “Wherever you’re meant to go.”_

_Steve furrows his eyebrows at the man. As confused as he is, he’s growing tired of getting nothing but vague answers._

_“Then I’d like to go back home.” Steve answers, crossing his arms over his chest._

_The man chuckles, one of his hands goes to his hip casually. “I didn’t say where you wanted to go. I said where you’re meant to go.”_

_The biting edge of the coin in his palm eggs Steve on. “Well, then I just won’t get on the boat. Not if I don’t know where I’m going.”_

_And now the man is thoroughly amused. His smile draws up to one side. “You’ll wander.” Steve shakes his head in response. “You will. You’ll wander until the ship comes back and you’ll get on eventually. But you will get on the ship.”_

_“I don’t think so, pal.” Steve says, drawing away from the man and turning towards the forest. And while its darkness scares him, he knows better than to get into strange boats with strange men. He’s from Brooklyn. "You're not on the ship."_

_"Kid," The stranger says, "I'm different."_ _The man follows him. Bare feet silent on the ground as he appears next to Steve all of a sudden. “That’s not the way that this works, Steve.”_

_Steve, spins around. The more he thinks about how he came here, the more his memories become like smoke, visible but impossible to grab onto. He certainly doesn’t know this man even if he knows Steve’s name. And it piques both a curiosity and anger in him that someone should know him by name when Steve doesn’t even know where he is._

_“Unless you’re planning on throwing me in that boat, I ain’t coming with you.” Steve fires off. He tries to make himself appear to be as imposing as possible._

_The man raises an eyebrow. He looks Steve up and down for a moment. “The thought had crossed my mind. How about I make you a deal.”_

_Deals from strange men on strange shores are something to be even more wary about. Steve’s pretty sure that he’s heard more than one sermon about this very moment._

_“How about I march on through that forest and find someone who will take me back to the city?” Steve says, turning around and continuing towards the forest._

_A strong hand reaches out quickly and snags his wrist, holding it tightly in its grasp. Steve, instantly filled with anger whirls around like one of those scandalized women in movies who have been wronged by the villain. “Get your hands off of me! Let me go! I’ll find my way back.”_

_“No, you won’t.” He retorts. “You’ll be lost.”_

_“I’ll figure it out!” Steve yells back. His heart is pounding in his chest, only instead of failing it just gets stronger._

_“You don’t understand.” The man says, looking between Steve and the tree line. He has a wary look on his face. “You go in there, and you’ll be lost. Gone forever. You’ll go back. But no one will ever see you again. Really see you. Ever.”_

_It’s crazy. Just as crazy as waking up here when he could have sworn he was in the hospital. Crazier still than the fact that his body is actually working for a change._

_“And if I get on the boat?” Steve asks, stopping from his struggles to make it to the trees._

_“You’ll go to where you’re supposed to go.” The man replies, shrugging. “I don’t have all the answers. I just take you across the lake and then you move on.”_

_Move on. It settles like a weight in his stomach._

_But he’s not ready to move on. He hasn’t done all of the things he wanted to do. Be a real artist. Kiss someone. Love someone. See the country. See the world. Just live._

_Steve’s eyes go wide, and the man must realize what’s happening. “It’s okay. Happens to all of us. The one thing we all have in common really. We all end up here.” He gestures to the shoreline._

_Steve shakes his head. “I’m not ready for this to happen.” And his other hand snakes in, grasping the man’s wrist for purchase. “This can’t be happening. I don’t want to go.”_

_There’s a long beat. The man’s gray eyes look back at the boat and then at Steve. His hand flexes around Steve’s wrist._

_“There’s one way.” The man says, sounding more unsure now. “You can’t fully belong to your world now that you’ve crossed over.” Crossed over. That means Steve’s really dead. “But you can split your time between that world and this one.” He reaches into his pocket and draws out a seed of all things. Bright red and glistening somehow even though it rests in the palm of the man’s hand. “But you have to eat this.”_

_Steve’s brow furrows, staring at the man’s hand. Strong looking hands from drawing people up and into the boat every day. Pulling souls into that ancient vessel._

_Nothing good ever happens from eating in this situation. Steve wonders if this man is actually a snake, and the seed might unleash hell on earth, destroying it._

_But he cannot get in that boat, not when he has no idea what waits for him on the other side. And life as he knew it might have been hard, but it was life. And how is he to know that there isn’t a gaping nothingness on the other side of the lake. What if for Steve it’s just over?_

_Steve sets his jaw, decision made._

_\--------_

The priest comes to visit Steve the next day as he sits up in bed for the first time in a week.

“It’s a miracle.” The priest tells Steve, wringing one of Steve’s fine-boned hands between two of his own.

Steve, pink-cheeked and breathing, gets a faraway look in his eyes. He nods along with the man all the while a sick, cold feeling permeates his insides.

It looks like a miracle.

It was actually just part of a bargain.

In his other hand, the coin digs into his flesh. It’s a chilling thing even though the metal has been warmed up by his skin. His eyes skate to the small mirror someone placed on his bedside. And there he sees his own reflection. He looks a lot better than he feels on the inside. But his eyes are bright and awake and there’s a flush to his skin that’s been absent for years.

And another reflection in the mirror. The first time he saw it, Steve thought it was his mind playing tricks on him. But it hadn’t been a trick. Sure as anything, the man from the shore was standing there in his sharp suit with a calculating look in his eyes. In the mirror, but not physically there when Steve turned around to look.

Just an ever present set of eyes reflecting back at Steve constantly.

Steve turns the mirror over, tries to get some sleep. He doesn’t even realize the coin’s still in his hand until he wakes up the next morning.

\--------

They release Steve a few days later, telling him that his recovery is one for the record books. His doctor gets a faraway look in his eyes whenever he looks at Steve. It probably has something to do with the fact that he pronounced Steve dead only to have been proven wrong an hour later. Steve tells the man that he’s not going to sue the hospital even though they were about to take his body down to the morgue.

“Just stay well.” The doctor says, nodding and backing away from Steve slowly on the day that he hands him his paperwork for release.

Everyone seems to fully believe that Steve’s breathing must have been so shallow that it appeared he was dead, perhaps the doctor must not have been paying attention when he was listening for Steve’s heartbeat.

“You’re one lucky guy.” A nurse tells him after he changes back into the clothes he was wearing on the day he was brought in.

Steve nods tightly.

“Thanks for all your hard work.” He tells her, trying to smile. But it feels too forced. “Do I have a bill or anything I need to take care of right now.” He’s praying that he doesn’t. All of the money that Steve has is in his wallet, and it’s just about enough to buy himself a bus ticket back to his apartment plus some groceries to get him through the next few days.

The nurse smiles brightly, “Nope, Father Michael took up a collection for you at mass last Sunday seeing as how your recovery must be divine intervention.”

That should make him happy. Instead, the lead weight in his stomach grows colder. Divine intervention. There’s nothing about what happened to Steve that has anything to do with God as far as he’s concerned. Hell, he doesn’t even fully know what he agreed to when he made the deal in the first place. One moment the bittersweet taste of the seed the man handed him exploded on his tongue and the next he was back under a sheet on the hospital ward in Brooklyn.

“Then if there’s nothing else, I guess I’ll be on my way?” Steve says awkwardly, pushing his hands into his pockets.

“Of course.” The nurse says, her hand reaches up to brush a lock of her blonde hair back behind her ear. She shyly smiles. “It really was amazing, Mr. Rogers. I’ve never seen anyone with your history recover from pneumonia.”

Not really knowing what to say to that besides a quick word of thanks, Steve leaves the ward. Very carefully he makes no move to glance back at his bed where he left the coin he had been handed when he was wherever he was. If it has any link to what happened, he wants nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

One of the last sunny days descends on Steve as he exits the hospital. As it’s mid-September New York City is just about to cool down, thought the trees haven’t started changing color or dropping leaves as of yet.

He takes in a large breath of fresh air for the first time in three weeks. It’s even more refreshing and wonderful than he could have imagined. His lungs seem fully able to expand fully and take everything for the first time. He hasn’t had a single asthma attack since waking up under that sheet. He’s been too afraid to ask about his heart murmur as well. Worried for either of the answers. That it’s still there. Or that it’s mysteriously gone.

Nothing is ever free. His ma used to tell him that. She would warn him against taking what seemed like help from people without knowing what he had to give in return. Too many mobsters and goons looking to give someone a loan and then come back with threats to break their kneecaps for whatever they hadn’t paid later.

Steve waits for a bus, jingling the change in his pocket absently as he stands there.

When the bus finally arrives, Steve hands the driver his fare without thinking too much about it. Only the driver calls out to him, “Mister, I only accept American money.”

Steve’s stomach turns, walking back to the front of the bus. The driver’s holding money in the his hand, one nickel and the large copper coin Steve left at the hospital. He feels instantly hot and sick. Steve stumbles down the stairs of the bus and out onto the street. The bus driver calls after Steve, there’s no way that Steve’s going back. Not when he knows he left the coin beside his bed. Knows it like he knows his own name. Knows it like he would bet his life on it.

And then he thinks he’s already bet his life. On a promise from a mysterious stranger who tried to get Steve on a boat going to oblivion.

Steve walks all the way home, thinking only about if it would have been better to go on the journey to the other shore of the lake rather than feel like he’s being haunted.

\--------

The coin is resting in the shallow tray where Steve leaves his keys when he gets home.

Steve throws it out the window and goes to take a bath.

The coin falls from the faucet and drops into the water, hitting the bottom of the tub with a dull sound.

\--------

He can’t look at himself in the mirror. Not when he knows he’ll see the stranger blinking back at him. Steve covers the bathroom looking glass with a pillowcase. He feels like he’s in mourning.

And no matter how Steve tries to get rid of the coin, it’s like they’re connected by an invisible thread. He can’t shake the coin just as much as he can’t shake the feeling of dread about the stranger.

\--------

Sometimes Steve fantasizes that maybe it’s something wrong with his brain and not some kind of looming promise to spend his time back on that awful shore. It would be so much easier if Steve was mentally ill and not doomed.

\--------

It’s not that easy. He catches glimpses of the stranger everywhere. In the steel of the razorblade he sharpens his pencils with, in windows of shops, and glasses of booze he thinks will help.

And his constitution is still better than it’s ever been, but he still ends up puking his guts out on the shoes of a beautiful girl waiting outside the bar with a cigarette in her hand.

“Oh dear.” The woman exclaims, her British accent filters through Steve’s foggy brain like a lighthouse. Bright and sharp light, guiding him through the breakers to shore.

She introduces herself as Peggy and takes him to an automat for coffee and toast once he can stand again.

And bless her, she doesn’t ask why Steve’s staring at the table and won’t look her in the eye. She must somehow understand there’s something that haunts everyone.

She works for the British Embassy.

When Steve asks her why she’s being so nice to him, she says. “There’s enough negativity in the world, more on the way soon enough. I try to do what I can for people.”

She walks Steve home, says nothing about how there’s barely room for a bed or the peeling paint. Instead she tells him they’ll get coffee when he feels better. She kisses him on the cheek and leaves.

Steve sits on the edge of his bed for a long time, staring across the room at the covered mirror on the other wall. Eventually he stands and pulls away the cloth in one swift motion, more curious than anything to see if the stranger is still there.

He is, of course he is. Staring at Steve with a touch of mirth.

In the reflection of the mirror, he’s standing behind Steve, closer to the bed where the moonlight this the shabby floor. An eyebrow quirks on his handsome face and then he steps closer to Steve, and there is no sound. Not even a creaking of floorboards as he passes Steve in the reflection and stands right before the glass. He leans down, fogging the mirror with his breath, one hand rising to write the number ‘7’ on the glass.

Steve’s too tired to even begin to wonder what that means. And his mother raised him better than this, but he makes an obscene gesture at the mirror and then he passes out on the bed.

\--------

The next night, it’s a ‘6’ spelled out on the counter in macaroni he spilled a second beforehand.

The day after, a random 5 scribbled on the back of the check that the waitress hands him when he goes out for lunch with Peggy.

4 in the peeling paint over his bed.

3 in the soap suds while he does the dishes.

2 somehow circled on the calendar hanging in his kitchen.

1 is the time that his alarm clock has stopped on. And nothing Steve does will make it keep ticking.

He walks to the calendar in a daze and sees that today is the official first day of fall.

Steve thinks of the fruit that the stranger offered him, and the bargain he was stupid enough to make. Splitting his life between this world and the next. Is this the stranger’s way of telling him to get his affairs in order?

What if the stranger goes back on his word and Steve is tricked into staying there forever? With no hope of ever crossing over or seeing the city again. Of seeing Peggy again and shooing pigeons off of the fire escape when he wants to sit out on mild spring evenings.

It’s even worse to know he’s going to be ripped away from the planet tomorrow. The sick countdown must be a joke to the stranger, if he’s as powerful as he seems to be.

Steve doesn’t have a phone, but there’s one on the corner. Peggy’s boarding house has one on the floor. She’s told him that it’s always hell trying to get in between girls calling their best guys or their parents.

Steve gives it a try, running to the corner as fast as his legs will carry him. It’s not very fast at all, but a few of his neighbors stare at him, so used to seeing Steve sickly and stiffly making his way home.

It’s a miracle. Peggy picks up the phone Steve calls. Her voice is a balm on his frazzled nerves. “I need to see you.” Steve tells her in lieu of greeting.

“I’ll meet you at the automat in 10.” She says without a beat, hanging up the phone.

She asks if he’s okay when she gets there. Steve’s already at a table, his hands drumming on the linoleum while he waits. Steve shakes his head.

“This would be a lot easier for both of us if I was just crazy, but I’m not.” Steve tells her, crossing his arms over his thin chest.

She instantly looks worried, her eyebrows coming together in a furrow of concern. “Steve, what’s going on?”

He tells her. Tells her everything. About being sick 6 weeks ago, how he lapsed into unconsciousness and then death. She says nothing the whole time, though her skin does get paler and paler as Steve rattles on and on.

He tells her about the lake and the man and how afraid he was about the mystery of where he would wind up in death. And then Steve tells her about the deal and how he woke up under the sheet. About the doctor fainting and the priest calling it a miracle. Peggy’s hand comes to cover her mouth when Steve tells her about he stranger in the reflections all around him, about the coin he has in his pocket at that very moment.

When he’s told her everything, she’s still silent. Even about the countdown and the next day being the first day of fall. She stares at Steve like she’s trying to read a language she’s never seen before.

Finally, she clears her throat and reaches across the table. Her warm hand curls around Steve’s forearm. It feels grounding to be touched like that.

“Can I see it?” Peggy asks in a hoarse voice.

Steve pulls the coin from his pocket and sets it down on the table.

Peggy nods to herself and takes a tube of lipstick from her purse. Then she unfolds her napkin on the table and sketches out the coin and the symbols on both sides.

“I want to take this to a historian at the Smithsonian. His sister went to boarding school with me.” Peggy tells him finally. “I’d rather take the coin, but as you said, it never leaves your side.”

Steve shakes his head. “How can you believe me?” He asks her. It’s almost scarier that she took his story as truth. Steve wonders a bit if Peggy herself might have a few screws loose.

“I’ve heard about impossible things to come, Steve Rogers.” She tells him. “So what happens tomorrow? Do you disappear? Do you lapse into a coma?”

Steve shrugs. “I wasn’t given a manual on how this all worked.” He says.

She winks, “Luckily I’ve a mind for plans and we’ve got a night and part of a day to figure some of this out, my friend.”

They sit in the automat for hours discussing what she should do with his apartment and Steve’s meager possessions. She knows that Steve hide a key to his place under the flowerpot beside his door just in case. Peggy will let herself in and pack his things, take them to her apartment for safekeeping. And since they have no idea how long Steve will be gone, she’ll let the landlord know that Steve’s visiting relatives upstate for the winter and they’ll let his place go up for rent.

With the growing tension in Europe, Peggy isn’t sure if she’ll be back in the UK a few weeks from now let alone months. She says she’ll bribe the doorman of her place to keep a letter for Steve to tell him where Peggy is and what’s happened to his belongings.

Peggy, the girl he threw up on, has somehow become his only lifeline to the mortal world.

Eventually the automat kicks them out and from there Peggy refuses to let him out of her sight. They walk through Brooklyn in the incredibly early morning. Long past the time when the bars close and the bakeries open. Peggy does most of the talking, which is nice.

Eventually they settle on a bench near the river. And the gentle sound of water lapping on the shore is actually soothing. Peggy promises she’ll stay awake, but it’s obvious that she’s exhausted and can barely keep her eyes open.

At dawn, the new light wakes her. She’s resting her cheek on the top of the wooden backrest, her body a collection of aches from sleeping in such an awkward position.

And Steve is just gone. In the place beside her is the bronze coin. That’s how she knows it happened.

“I’ll figure out a way to make you stay.” Peggy says to herself. She doesn’t think Steve can hear her.

The stranger can.

**Author's Note:**

> I love comments and chatting with you over there. I also love kudos. What I don't love are comments along the lines of asking for an update. Updates will come when they come and I'm really not motivated by this kind of feedback.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy this story


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